The House oversight committee chairman submitted a slew of amendments Tuesday. |
AP Photo
Close

* Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) would prohibit funding of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the nation’s education laws for students in kindergarten through 12th grade).

* Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) would ban the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to order the production of library circulation records, patron lists, book sales records or bookstore customer lists.

* Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) wants to make sure that former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac don’t get government-funded lawyers.

* Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) would make Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner a prisoner of Washington by prohibiting the use of federal money to assist him in traveling.

But Issa’s set of sex, booze and drugs amendments will be sure to grab marquee billing if they’re offered on the floor. It’s been nearly two years since a Labor-Health and Human Services-Education spending bill was debated on the floor, but such funding-limitation amendments were once a staple of discussion over budget levels for NIH.

Typically, the lawmaker argues that the study is a waste of taxpayer money and the administration — or the researcher who won the grant in question — counters that the research is important for disease prevention or treatment.

Integral yoga, according to Wikipedia, “refers to the process of the union of all the parts of one’s being with the Divine, and the transmutation of all of their jarring elements into a harmonious state of higher divine consciousness and existence.”

Readers' Comments (82)

National Institutes of Health grants, while others restrict the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation.

No doubt there are silly studies - but I'm concerned that health and science see to be favorite republican targets - I'm sure ther is some gov't study about oil production, etc, but we don't hear them targeted....

ANOTHER POLITICO HIT PIECE...can you guys get any more liberal...probably NOT. Taking that SOROS money are you..???.channeled through MEDIA MATTERS perhaps? Mindless dweebs now reside on this site...nothing to see here folks...absolutely nothing.

So if there is a "slew" of amendments being submitted, why focus on the ones in your headline? Does it have something to do with Issa's intent to investigate the administration and the beloved Obama? Or is it just childish, liberal petulance, the kind Normal people are almost used to?

I am very disheartend that my Congressman Connie Mack is trying to nix funding for K - 12 education. Florida schools are amongst the worst in the nation. But he wouldn't know since he spends most of his time in his wife's district in California than here in Fort Myers.

It remains to be seen whether Issa or any politican will get serious about government waste and pork projects. One note about the marijuana issue is that it was Nixon who began the failed, continuing war on drugs not because he cared about the health of the youth but instead to target his young "anti-Nixon" opponents and classified marijuana as a Class One drug along with coke and heroine though there have never been an overdose death associated with marijuana during it 4,000-plus-year history. Still, last year over 800,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana possession. I learned the hypocrisy of America's drug laws as an USAF social actions officer in the'70s. Trained to deal with opiate addicts from Vietnam, instead 99% of those encountered with drug-related issues were alcohol-related, aided by the cheap military booze and officer and NCO club environments.

So if there is a "slew" of amendments being submitted, why focus on the ones in your headline? Does it have something to do with Issa's intent to investigate the administration and the beloved Obama? Or is it just childish, liberal petulance, the kind Normal people are almost used to?

Issa loves power and money. It began with his auto theft as a youth and continues today. GOP needs to rid themselves of him and gain someone with credibility. I don't want a thief in charge of anything in the government...much less represent voters. That makes all of us in his district nothing more than car thief voters.

Issa loves power and money. It began with his auto theft as a youth and continues today. GOP needs to rid themselves of him and gain someone with credibility. I don't want a thief in charge of anything in the government...much less represent voters. That makes all of us in his district nothing more than car thief voters.

We know these myths by heart. Government acts on behalf of the public good. It keeps us safe. It protects us against monopolies. It provides indispensable services we could not provide for ourselves. Without it, America would be populated by illiterates, half of us would be dead from quack medicine or exploding consumer products, and the other half would lead a feudal existence under the iron fist of private firms that worked them to the bone for a dollar a week.

Thus Americans tolerate much government predation because they have bought into the myth that state intervention may be an irritant, but the alternative of a free society would be far worse. They have been conditioned to believe that despite whatever occasional corruption they may observe in politics, the government by and large has their well-being at heart. Schoolchildren in particular learn a version of history worthy of Pravda. Governments, they are convinced, abolished child labor, gave people good wages and decent working conditions; protect them from bad food, drugs, airplanes, and consumer products; have cleaned their air and water; and have done countless other things to improve their well-being. They truly cannot imagine how anyone who isn’t a stooge for industry could think differently, or how free people acting in the absence of compulsion and threats of violence – which is what government activity amounts to – might have figured out a way to solve these problems. The history of regulation is, in this fact-free version of events, a tale of righteous crusaders winning victories for the public against grasping and selfish private interests who care nothing for the common good.

But let’s suppose that the federal government has in fact been an enemy of the people’s welfare, and that the progress in our living standards has occurred quite in spite of its efforts. It pits individuals, firms, industries, regions, races, and age groups against each other in a zero-sum game of mutual plunder. It takes credit for improvements in material conditions that we in fact owe to the private sector, while refusing to accept responsibility for the countless failures and social ills to which its own programs have given rise. Rather than bringing about the "public good," whatever that means, it governs us through a series of fiefdoms seeking bigger budgets and more power. Despite the veneer of public-interest rhetoric by which it camouflages its real nature, it is a mere parasite on productive activity and a net minus in the story of human welfare.

Now if this is a more accurate depiction of the federal government, we are likely to have a different view of the consequences of the coming fiscal collapse. So an institution that has seized our wealth, held back the rise in our standard of living, and deceived schoolchildren into honoring it as the source of all progress, will have to be cut back? What’s the catch? This is no calamity to be deplored. It is an opportunity to be seized.